<p>Single list tight:</p>

<ul>
<li>hi </li>
<li>there</li>
<li>fella </li>
</ul>

<p>Single list loose in "paragraph mode":</p>

<ul>
<li><p>hey </p></li>
<li><p>there</p></li>
<li><p>partner </p></li>
</ul>

<p>Single list loose with multiple paragraphs in an item:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>How you doin'?</p></li>
<li><p>this item contains multiple paragraphs.</p>

<p>More than one that is.</p>

<p>Three to be exact.</p></li>
<li><p>And this one is just a bunch of lines.
Spliced together as a single item.
A single paragraph.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>A single list that looks like multiple lists
separated by a blank line:</p>

<ul>
<li>list 1</li>
<li>with three</li>
<li><p>elements</p></li>
<li><p>still list 1</p></li>
<li>adding four</li>
<li>more</li>
<li><p>elements</p></li>
<li><p>sic, this is still list 1</p></li>
<li>now with</li>
<li>even</li>
<li>more</li>
<li>elements</li>
</ul>

<p>There's no way to actually get multiple consecutive lists in Markdown.
Neither Markdown.pl nor python-markdown allow it either.
In a mailing list thread a few years back, John Gruber
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181229032814/http://article.gmane.org:80/gmane.text.markdown.general/2554">suggested using double blank lines</a>
to separate consecutive lists but no implementation does it.
For now you need to separate consecutive lists with unindented text:</p>

<ul>
<li>list 1</li>
<li>with three</li>
<li>elements</li>
</ul>

<p>Cough.</p>

<ul>
<li>list 2</li>
<li>with</li>
<li>four</li>
<li>elements</li>
</ul>

<p>Cough. Cough.</p>

<ul>
<li>list 3</li>
<li>with</li>
<li>even</li>
<li>more</li>
<li>elements</li>
</ul>
